This Is No Thaw
by meldahlie
Summary: "They say Aslan is on the move. Some say He has already landed." Aslan comes from Over The Sea. Where did He land in Narnia? One-shot, missing moment from LWW.


This Is No Thaw

" _They say Aslan is on the move. Some say He has already landed."_ Aslan comes from Over The Sea. Where did He land in Narnia? One-shot, missing moment from LWW.

~:~:~

"Always winter and never Christmas!" Thornbut the Dwarf muttered to himself as he scrambled over one waist-high lump of ice and skirted the next even higher one. Most times he would have climbed that too, but tonight he had lost one mitten. He wasn't going to risk freezing his bare hand to a block of ice and having to pull it off leaving the skin behind – or worse, finding himself stuck there completely, to slowly turn into as solid a block as the stone statues the White Witch turned all who opposed her into.

No-one would miss him, either. Dwarves are not fauns, who live in isolated caves and only gather for their dances and feasts – which never happened any more, because it was always winter and never Christmas. No, dwarves are congregating folk, living with all their family in warm, snug, company-filled caves with never a lonely moment. Except-

Thornbut sighed, a small noise lost instantly amid the high, shrill whining of the wind through the piled pack-ice about him. He was an out-dweller, an outcast, living more alone than a faun. Sometimes the fauns gathered to remember their dances and feasts that never happened. Thornbut only hoped when his family gathered, they did not remember him.

They must have retained some sort of family feeling. For otherwise his brothers, one and all in the service of the Witch, would surely have reported him. The dreamer, they had always called him. Then it had been the coward. Then the disgrace. Then the traitor. And he had grown afraid, and had fled.

It had been a long, long way from the snug little cave in the Western mountains near Cauldron Pool to this desolate Eastern shore. Every night, the wolves had howled. He hadn't known if they were just the packs of wild wolves, or the Witch's own Talking Wolves set on his trail.

At least wolves did not prowl this Eastern shore. There was no game to hunt here, among the piled pack-ice. Thornbut himself survived by fishing, under the ice. He had a small set of steps, cut down through the sheet of ice, into the green-lit world below. It was cold down there. Not as variable as on the surface, but still so cold he had to wear mittens all the time, and his fingers ached when the mittens got wet landing the fish. If the fish wriggled and splashed a lot, his little ice platform got slippery and then it was dangerous. One mis-step and that would be the end of him, in that icy water.

He was careful, always careful. But one day, Thornbut knew, the ice would get him. If not by him slipping, then in a thaw, when the ice cracked and gave way and piled up anew with noises louder than thunder. The ice ceiling sagged, the platform tipped, his flight of steps tilted to hazardous angles. But if he wanted to eat, he still had to go on fishing.

The best fishing was always at night, which was what he was doing out in this cold pre-dawn greyness, scrambling homewards through the ice. The steps down beneath the ice, the little igloo at the foot of the great iceberg – this was his world. The two parts were inconveniently far apart, a half hour's scramble at the best of times and much longer today. But he had needed level ice to cut the steps, while the vast mass of tumbled, deep-frozen old pack-ice around the iceberg provided the most screening for his igloo. It wasn't as if the sealskin door flap with its clumsy stone weights at the bottom would have been much protection if anything saw the igloo and came after him.

That had been all Thornbut had been thinking of, when he built his igloo there. But it had turned out to be a good spot during the thaws, as well. Nothing ever seemed to melt that great iceberg, which must surely have drifted there at the very start of the Great Winter. There was no way it was just pack-ice. Perhaps it was the great cold off the huge lump of ice which meant none of the pack-ice piled around it ever melted or broke, in the lethal cascades of sharp ice fragments Thornbut had to dodge elsewhere along the shore. Even when all the shore turned to dingy slush and the mouth of the usually frozen river just beyond the iceberg poured forth a swirling mass of broken ice and snow, the pack-ice at the foot of the iceberg simply piled up deeper.

Deeper and deeper. Colder and colder. Thornbut paused for a moment to catch his breath, huffing white clouds out through the carefully adjusted scarf across his mouth. It had to be arranged very carefully, for it was getting threadbare, and had one or two small holes – but where would he get wool to mend it, let alone replace it? His lost sealskin mitten was going to be enough of a problem.

Thornbut sighed again and scrambled on. The pack-ice grew taller here, nearer to the iceberg. The blocks and pillars towered up above him, taller even than a man if such a creature ever existed in Narnia. He tried not to think whether some of them might be even taller than the Witch herself. At the very thought, Thornbut knew that he twitched. She was not here, of course. But he could not help looking behind.

There was nothing to see. The ice closed off any lines of view along his twisting path. Only here and there did narrow vistas open. Off to the West, the distant forest. Around two more bends, a glimpse North to the iceberg. Up a couple of steps, down three, and through an arch of ice there was the flat, frozen sea, stretching bleak and barren to the Eastern horizon. Or-

Thornbut stopped. There was the flat, frozen sea, stretching bleak and barren to the Eastern horizon. But across it, right from one side of the framing arch to the other, ran a thin black line.

A crack! A crack in the ice! His heart sank as fast as a fish dropped back into the sea. If there was a crack, there was a thaw coming. And if there was a thaw, the ice would move and shift and pile up again, and he would never stand any chance of finding his lost mitten! Thornbut realised he had leaned against the icy sides of the arch to peer out at the line. He jerked his hand back, pink and tingling in the palm, white and numb in the tips.

No! He must not panic. He must stay calm. If this was a thaw, he must stay even more calm, for he would have to turn back at once, retrace his steps, hunt all the way along the winding path until he found his mitten, then try and make it back to his igloo before the ice falls started. Thaws came fast, when they came. But was this a thaw?

What else could it be? Thornbut rubbed his eyes, but the line across the ice did not go away. Besides, the dark things that came into his vision from weariness were always splots and blotches, never lines. And this was a line – clear and sharp as any crack he had ever seen. But – it wasn't right. Not quite. The crack ran the wrong way, east to west, as if it ran almost towards him. Neither was there the boom of breaking ice which always came before the cracking.

He must find his mitten. He must go home. He must know what was happening.

Thornbut stood, irresolute, by the arch. On? Back? What was it?

What was it! That had to be the answer! If he knew, if he was quick, all might yet be well. Thornbut turned sharply, slithering on the snow-covered ice beneath his feet, and began to hurry onwards. Just further along, just a little further on, the ice made a natural flight of steps up to one side of the path. If he climbed those, he would be able to see the whole sea, not just a narrow strip!

It would be horribly exposed, of course. His bare hand, not hidden in the camouflaging whiteness of sealskin, made it feel as if he would be even more obvious than usual. But he had to know – he had to know – he had to know! Thornbut puffed the refrain to himself as stumbled and slipped up the steps. They weren't steps at all, really, just piled up ice deep with soft snow, and each rise much too high for him to step up comfortably. And exposed, so exposed. At the top, he lost his nerve altogether and crawled through the snow.

There was the sea: flat, frozen, stretching out to the Eastern horizon. But across it ran a long black line, from the horizon straight to Narnia. At the shore-end of the crack, coming steadily onwards, paced a lion.

Did the beast not see that the ice was breaking beneath him?! That at any moment the crack would catch him up and pass him and the icy waters swallow him forever?!

Except – except – the crack did not pass him. The ice did not boom and break. The narrow black line through the ice was not filling with the bobbing, broken fragments that should have been there. It was clear water, and the rising sun coloured it red as blood.

Thornbut had opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it stayed hanging open. Because – because this could be no lion. This must, must, must be the Lion! The Lion! What other beast would come from Over The Sea? Or shine so golden that the red-and-gold sunrise behind him looked dim?! Or walk on and on, over those frozen waves that simply melted away behind him?!

Out at sea, the crack was widening. A bigger band of red followed the Lion. But where-?! Thornbut sprang up and looked wildly around. The Lion! The Lion! Aslan was coming Over The Sea to Narnia – where were his people?! His Talking beasts?! His Trees?! His Naiads?! Where were they? Was there no-one but one outcast dwarf to see Him?!

It didn't matter! It didn't matter! Aslan was here! Coming back to Narnia! Thornbut began to shout. Then he ripped off his hat and began to wave it. He would not be attacked by the Witch's fell beasts – would they not flee from the Lion?! He would not freeze – was it not warmer already?! All! – all! – that mattered – was that Aslan might see him! Might hear him! Might know that one, one outcast dwarf alone, in this frozen waste of Narnian shore, was glad to see Him!

The wind whisked away his shouts. His cap was white against the snow. He himself was tiny against the masses of the pack-ice. But it seemed to Thornbut that, for one instant, the Lion might have looked towards him, might have twitched His tail in reply.

In reply!? The Lion had twitched His tail in reply to the least of His dwarves?! Thornbut almost threw himself around, slipped and slithered and jumped down the steps in a way that would have terrified him yesterday, would surely send him falling to a broken neck. But the Lion was here, was here! Fall, freeze, what did it matter if Aslan had come?! All that mattered was to get down, down off the ice, down to the shore, down to where the Lion must step into Narnia.

His hat went missing somewhere on the steps, his remaining mitten vanished as he tumbled into the pile of soft snow at the foot, but Thornbut didn't stop to look for them. He scrambled to his feet and began to run along the winding path through the pack-ice. Aslan had been following a line that should bring him ashore somewhere near the great iceberg, amidst the very thickest and tallest pack-ice. Except – was the ice as tall as it had been? Was the snow as thick? It grew taller and taller here, in these last rises before the iceberg and his igloo – but it was growing lower and lower. No slushy piles and glassy slides hindered his feet – the cold, the snow, the ice – they were all simply vanishing around him!

Of all impossible things, Thornbut could see ahead of himself, across a low field of hummocky snow rapidly dimpling into a patchwork of golden spots. That would have been a strange colour enough, but the Lion outshone it all – living gold, brighter than snow or sunrise.

And He had reached the shore before Thornbut, and stood at the foot of the great ice-berg. That alone had not vanished, and the Lion bent His head down and seemed to breath upon it. Thornbut stopped. For little golden glimmers were running up the ice, out from where Aslan had breathed. Running, running like flame, across and somehow inside the towering block of ice. The new dawning sun glinted off it, as it had done so many, many mornings, but the Lion's gold ran through it, brighter yet. Brighter and brighter, until the whole iceberg was a massive, golden block. And then it went. It didn't melt, it didn't fall; it simply went like a veil of mist brushed aside to reveal the golden stone walls and soaring turrets of the largest, fairest castle that had ever, surely, been in the world.

The walls towered up into the blue sky, but they didn't dwarf the Lion. Thornbut didn't look at them again. The castle was amazing, but-

He jerked back into motion, stumbled along the last stretch of the beach – dry, golden sand! – his legs quite spent, and fell to his knees before the Lion.

"Aslan! Aslan!"

The sand before his bowed face grew even more golden with the light from the Lion. Thornbut could feel the warmth of the great head bending over him, and then the gentle touch of the Lion's tongue on his own head.

"Rise, Son of Earth. It is well met."

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 _A/N: Yes, another back story for a minor canon character! But King Edmund obviously trusted him a lot, to entrust Corin to him, and somebody has to have seen Aslan first! As for the Cair, why not?_

 _~:~:~_


End file.
